Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, is to be made a Labour peer in a new list of political peerages due to be announced shortly.

Labour was not commenting on the reports, but it is understood from two different sources that the reports are correct.

Ed Miliband has a record of trying to put non-establishment people into the Lords including Lord Glasman, the academic and proponent of Blue Labour.

Miliband has long admired Doreen Lawrence's campaigning skills, as well as her commitment to wider race issues.

Earlier this month she gave evidence to the home affairs select committee following claims by the former undercover officer Peter Francis that attempts were made to find information to smear the Lawrence family after Stephen's murder in April 1993.

She has already received an OBE and founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust to promote a positive community legacy in her son's name.

She is a member of both the board and the council of the human rights organisation Liberty, as well as being a patron of the hate crime charity Stop Hate UK. She also took part in the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony.

A Labour source said: "Doreen Lawrence is a hero of modern Britain. The strength and courage she has shown in her fight for justice for her son Stephen has had a profound impact on attitudes to racism and policing. Her campaigning has changed, and will continue to change, our country for the better. Ed Miliband believes voices like hers should always be heard in parliament."

It is expected the new list of working peers will be announced on Thursday, with the Conservatives receiving an extra 15 working peers, the Liberal Democrats an extra 10 and Labour an extra five.

David Cameron has argued the new list and the tilt in the balance of appointments towards the coalition reflects the constitutional expectation to try to make the Lords more closely mirror the result of the last general election.

Labour claims Cameron is doing more to pack the Lords full of his supporters than any recent prime minister. It admits that the overall increase of 25 in the coalition's number of working peers, compared to Labour's extra five, will reduce the number of defeats Labour is likely to be able to inflict between now and the next election. New working peers tend to be regular attenders, and Labour will have to rely on persuading crossbenchers to back Labour and on large numbers of Liberal Democrats abstaining to defeat the Conservatives in the Lords.

It is thought that the former Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate and former senior policeman Brian Paddick is in line for a peerage. Other potential candidates are Olly Grender, the former press secretary to both Lord Ashdown and Nick Clegg, Alison Suttie, Clegg's former chief of staff, Liz Lynne, the former Rochdale MP and former MEP for the West Midlands, and Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, a founder SDP member and the Lib Dems' current treasurer. The most controversial appointment is likely to be Rumi Verjee, a multimillionaire who brought the Domino's pizza chain to Britain. He has given £770,000 to the party since May 2010, mainly to help with the development of minority ethnic candidates.

Nick Clegg defended his right to appoint Liberal Democrat donors to the Lords as long as the Lords remains unelected because of opposition from the other parties.

He said: "I would love to get rid of this whole appointments shenanigans, but I have been blocked at every turn. I would very happily give up any appointments to the House of Lords and put the voters in charge. But given the system is as it is, of course I would continue to discharge my right as a party leader to put people in the Lords who share the values of the Liberal Democrats, who support the Liberal Democrats and have a record of showing they support the Liberal Democrats in any number of different ways."

Traditionally senior figures in the TUC are given peerages, but Brendan Barber, the much admired recently retired TUC general secretary, has already been knighted in the Queen's birthday honours list.